Mandolin helps keep band member Nate Sipe moving

Dec. 4, 2013
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Pert Near Sandstone

When: 8 p.m. Thursday Where: Wooly’s, 504 E. Locust St. Cost: $12

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Pert Near Sandstone member Nate Sipe got his start playing guitar, but his transition to mandolin (as well as fiddle) was about practicality. A guitar is a big instrument to lug around when you’re hopping freight trains.

“When I started traveling I did some pretty long extended trips out of the country,” Sipe said during a phone interview. “A guitar is too large to just fling over your shoulder, but a mandolin you’re able to clip on and hitchhike or hop freight trains. That is as an attractive element there.”

These days Sipe does most of his traveling with the band, but said that he still gets urges to hit the road in his old train-hopping manner. Sipe said at this point tours might be the closest he gets.

“As you get older it gets harder to do the traveling I was doing,” Sipe said. “But it’s a great way to meet people. Honestly, you can’t hear a damn thing when you’re playing mandolin in a box car, but it still makes you feel like Woody Guthrie.”